Fishing

Once upon a time, back before my husband and I had little ones, we used to go fishing together a lot. My husband is quite the fisherman, and in the early years of our relationship it was a fun way for us to spend time together. A lot of time. We would go out on the boat at the crack of dawn and stay out all day. Sometimes talking, sometimes not. Sometimes freezing our butts off. Sometimes sweating half to death. Sometimes catching fish. Sometimes not.

I started out as a complete klutz with a fishing rod. I frequently got my lure hung up on something under the water. Once in a while even in a tree. Above the water. Sometimes I managed to swing the rod wildly and nearly take my husband's head off. Frequently my line got hopelessly tangled. I didn't have the right technique for reeling in a fish on the rare occasion that I caught one. I couldn't operate a trolling motor. I didn't know how to take a fish off a hook. Basically, I was a disaster with a fishing rod when he started taking me fishing. I won't even go into my early attempts to assist with getting the boat in and out of the water.

Now, I could spin this into a lovely romantic tale where I tell you all about how patient and kind my husband was with me when teaching me the art of fishing. How gentle and tolerant he was when I made my very frequent mistakes. When he had to back the boat up because I had cast behind us and my lure was caught on a rock. When I broke one of his fishing rods. When I nearly ran the boat into a bunch of rocks because he was in the back struggling to get my lure unstuck from some unknown underwater vise and I was totally clueless about running the trolling motor. I could tell a beautiful fishing love story. Except that wasn't how it went. Not. Even. Close. My wonderful hubby is a hard core fisherman. He yelled. He swore. A lot. At first.

He caught this walleye last night

He yelled and swore a lot at first. See, those early days of fishing together were a great way for us to strengthen our relationship. Fortunately we had quite a strong relationship to begin with. So, when he yelled, I (essentially) told him to cut it out. And to his credit, he did. Most of the time. If I did something stupid, I apologized. If he lost his temper, he apologized. And miraculously, he kept asking me to go with him. And I kept going. I learned a ton and eventually became quite a competent fisherwoman. Some of my best memories are of the times we spent fishing together. And I think I softened him up a little bit for our daughters. Okay, who am I kidding? They don't need any help from me to melt their Dad. It's a good thing too, because I think they're going to spend a lot of time fishing with him.

Today Miss saw her cousins fishing and was very into it.

She quite enjoyed checking out the bait, both the bucket of minnows and the box of worms.

She requested her own fishing rod so she could give it a try. Her Baba rigged up a rod for her and got her going.

Within a few seconds they got a bite.

Miss was so excited to "catch" her first fish. It was a bluegill.

But then she wasn't so sure that she wanted to get very close to it. This is her, "I'm-not-sure-what-to-do-that-thing-is-kind-of-freaking-me-out" face.

She wouldn't touch the fish, but we did manage to get her to stand close enough for it to get a few photos.

To top off our day of fishing, Miss's cousins caught 13 huge crappies that my brother-in-law and father-in-law cleaned and my mother-in-law fried up for dinner. It was delicious, and Miss gobbled it up. I think we're going to be doing a lot of fishing this week.